ADOM (My personal favorite of the rougelikes) has permadeath and random overworld encounters that are handled very well. they have the difficutly scaled by location (how far you are into the wilderness from the stasrt of the game) and by game time, so early on in the game you get goblins/kobolds etc, but as the game clock runs the monsters get more difficult. it occaisonally causes an early charecter to get killed ,but in general adds a nice flavor to the game.

I've always felt IVAN was characterized by the dungeons with their mix of random enemies and design as well as static additions that presented new problems or possibly new solutions (though certainly not without cost). Random encounters out in the wilderness I feel would break the feel of that and since the 'real' part of the game takes place in the dungeons anyway, I don't think it would be a positive change. Also worth noting is that as the game is at the moment, the previous concern is irrelevant because the longest trip anywhere in the overworld is from the underwater tunnel to Attnam, and as the second longest trip is generally much smaller, unless you make random encounters really common there probably won't be all that many and thus it won't be able to make the kind of impression they do in ADOM. Though, really for me it seems like it will be more annoying and unfun than otherwise to have random encounters.

IDK, you could try to reinvent the random encounter model, instead of just the "you are ambushed by a bunch of random monsters" model, give you random encounters that give you a chance to add alignemtn roleplay "you encounter a carvan of traders, do you want ot help/pillage them" or such. I think it could be a tool to really flesh out the IVAN world.

I dont disagree that some aspects of random encounters are pretty lame and dont really add much to a game, but as it stands the overworld has no real purpose. you could just as easily eliminate it alltogether. All it does is occasionally starve a beginner player.

The latest version of the game is 0.50. The plan was that there'd be a empires and cities out there doing trade, wars, politics and other sorts of things without the player doing anything about it. This game is not finished, therefore some things that seemingly have no purpose, might simply not been finished yet.

A scatterbrained wand. Does the effect of a random wand when zapped. Has a chance to break itself resulting in a random effect too.

And probably an outlandish idea: The Room of Change Material. A simple non-descript room that looks no different to the others on the level, but anything inside the room occasionally changes material to something random. Upon entering the room there should be some sort of alert, like "This room seems dangerous", "you get the feeling it is not safe here", "Your skin seems to be crawling". The change should affect all bodyparts along with inventory items, but only has a chance to (to prevent everything changing at once) and without an announcement of having done so. The message "Your head suddenly feels like marble!" would definately give it away.
To make things more interesting, there should be a unique monster that spawns in there, and is slow-moving so it has time to get its limbs and such changed. A golem of some sort, perhaps?

System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.

Joined: Dec 3, 2007
Occupation: Chaos Weaver
Location: Standing between all life and death
Posts: 2,825

Interesting idea. However, I can't help but think it'd be broken due to the fact there's just so many more harmful spells cast your way than beneficial ones. How about magic immunity? Magic doesn't affect you, period. That'll include spells, wands, scrolls, equipment, fountains, the works. Possibly prayer effects as well. It'd work both ways, so it won't be so broken.

Uchuudonge wrote

creating stable chaos
making patterns where there should be none
sewing order into the chaos
you spit in the face of random numbers, of chaos

Reflecting some things like lightning, fireballs, and healing spells would be cool. Then you could use the old Final Fantasy trick of casting Reflect on a monster before it uses its own healing spell, thus causing it to heal you instead. Or casting Reflect on yourself, and then using lightning or a fireball on yourself and sending it in a random direction.

Or casting Reflect on yourself, and then using lightning or a fireball on yourself and sending it in a random direction.

Sounds like an appealing idea, particularly implemented as a state.

It gives me an idea for a scroll of fire balls, where if you read it, then you can cast a spell on a selected square (spell range proportional to your intelligence). This would be a bit like the spells of an elder dark mage, in that you could cast the spell from a distance. It would also finally make the behaviour of dark mages somewhat more explicable; it bothered me a little that I couldn't cast spells like they do.
The scroll could be volatile and explode like a wand of fireballs. If you are confused state, then confuse-read means the incantation goes wrong and you blow yourself up.

Wand/Scroll of healing sounds great too.

Batman? wrote

its been so long since i had gotten that far i didnt think it through. arrrr!!!!!!

Joined: Dec 3, 2007
Occupation: Chaos Weaver
Location: Standing between all life and death
Posts: 2,825

Warheck wrote

It gives me an idea for a scroll of fire balls...

As far as that goes, there was some sort of magic to be added to IVAN beyond the scrolls/wands way we have right now.

13:55 < J_Kahvi> if the psi system is added we could make an explanation for why food in shops stays unspoilt
13:55 < J_Kahvi> the shopkeeper would have a remove air -spell and would remove the air around the foodstuffs
13:55 < J_Kahvi> it could also be used to suffocate slow enemies
13:56 < J_Kahvi> or well, not remove, but push aside
13:56 < J_Kahvi> since shopkeepers aren't much of magicians, it could be a quite simple spell

Uchuudonge wrote

creating stable chaos
making patterns where there should be none
sewing order into the chaos
you spit in the face of random numbers, of chaos

Maybe because it's damn near freezing in Attnam by the time you get there?
Perhaps the same could be said for the GC shop (not that i've seen any food in there as far as I remember) because it's so deep underground and kept in a cold stone room.

Coding wise, I have no idea.

System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.

With the exception of Hulbo, who is not friends with the tax collectors.

System would indicate in graphic if person is mounted on horse or not.
Same system also show if person mounted on boar, elephant, polar bear etc.
Or if person mounted on ass.
Ivan find mounting on ass funny.